Choosing the Right Toys for Child Development

Construction and Rule-Based Toys

3. Construction (Arming) Toys

Mostly used from age four, these toys serve to represent reality as the child conceives it. In this category are puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, threading games, glass beads, building blocks, etc.

4. Rule-Based Toys

From the age of four, the child can follow instructions and respect simple rules, which will allow him/her to engage in group games. As the child grows up, he/she can use toys with more complex rules like Lottery, Ludo, and Chess. Progressively, chance is less important and it gives way to logic and ingenuity. In children with low tolerance for frustration, lies, cheating (traps), or poor sportsmanship (bad losing) will appear. The ESAR classification system divides them into simple and complex rule sets.

Recommendations for Parents and Educators

Some recommendations that parents and educators should take into account are:

• Watch television with children to assess the effects that the programs produce and to comment with them on the information, images, or verbal expressions.
• Limit the time of exposure to television and encourage them to engage in other alternative activities.
• Keep the TV on only for the duration of the selected program.
• Promote the capacity for discrimination and selection of programs to create a television criterion.
• Select enriching programs that transmit positive values and characters.
• Promote a responsible consumption of toys and do not be influenced by the effect of advertising.

The Impact of Excessive Toys

With regard to this last recommendation, we must add that an excess of toys:

• Decreases motivation and interest in toys and limits creativity.
• Disperses the attention of children, so they do not come to explore the possibilities of development that each one of the toys offers them.
• Provokes capricious attitudes, generates frustration in children when they do not achieve what they want, and produces a lack of interest in the conservation and care of the toy.

Promoting Equality Through Play

We encourage equality when:

• We stimulate the same capacities in children (both boys and girls), such as sensitivity, tenderness, care, aesthetics, initiative, bravery, and audacity.
• We facilitate the use of games and toys indiscriminately.

Encouraging Non-Violent Attitudes

We encourage non-violent attitudes when:

• We empower, through games and toys, conflict resolution in a positive and creative way.
• We propose cooperative and multicultural games.
• We practice with our example.